Experience 72 | Zach Schroeder, Co-Owner of Poudre Sports Car LLC
Zach Schroeder is the Co-Owner of Poudre Sports Car LLC, which has been is business for over 50 years now! They specialize in European sports cars and Zach is a master Porsche technician and a race driving trainer.
We talk about Zach's childhood and how he developed his passion for sports cars, working with his father at a young age. We also talk about the origins of the company, challenges he went through, and go into some personal topics as well.
Zach has a an inspiring story about taking over his fathers business and I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did!
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Music By: A Brother's Fountain
welcome back. This is your host Kurt bear. In this episode, you're gonna meet Zach Schroeder owner operator of putter sports car in Fort Collins. Puter sports car has been in business for over 50 years. And it's a leading independent shop in Colorado for high end European auto repair, restoration and modification, especially fast cars. Zach is a master Porsche technician and a race driving trainer tune in, as Zach shares his business journey, which started unexpected. As he and his brother Steven took over the business upon their father's sudden passing. Welcome back to the local experience podcast. I'm honored today to be joined by Zach Schroeder. Zach is co-owner along with his brother and man about the shop at putter sports car in Fort Collins. And, uh, Zach, why don't we just begin by describing putter sports car? What, who do you serve? What are you doing?
Zach:
Well, we've been repairing and selling European sports cars, primarily Porsche since 1972. When my father started the company, um, my brother step and I took over after my father passed away in 2015 and have been doing it ever since. So
Curt:
just a general service auto repair, general service auto repair shop business focused on European fast cars.
Zach:
Yeah. Yes. And primarily Porsche.
Curt:
Okay. Um, and so how many mechanics or technicians
Zach:
one team technicians? Yeah, we've got myself included and I'm trying to get paid more
Curt:
if they're technicians,
Zach:
I suppose. Huh? Well, you know, and there's some, a little bit more. Honesty there it's not just changing oil and repair, you know, being sloppy. Yeah. But we have myself included five technicians right now. Okay. I'm kind of a halfway technician at this point where I take on the more complex
Curt:
things. You're still the best mechanic, but you gotta do other things, but I'd like my other
Zach:
guys to take that mantle from me. Yeah.
Curt:
That would be, that would be good. Maybe they'll, uh, be challenged by this conversation and start working harder and, and get they work plenty hard. Yeah. So, and then what, who else is a part of a team in that kind of a business? So my brother
Zach:
runs the he's kind of front of the house. Yeah. He runs front of the house exclusively and, he would be considered the general manager. He takes care of employee stuff, kind of HR E type stuff. does about 70% of our client interaction. Yeah.
Curt:
Um, so he is kind of the service advisor as well as, and then who does the things like bookkeeping and doing the actual hiring and stuff like that. So hiring,
Zach:
we, he and I work together on okay. And we generally include at least one or more of the current staff in those decisions, just because I think we're small enough that if we get someone in there that, uh, grinds some gears, then it it's a lot bigger problem. So we try to be pretty open about that. Um, as far as bookkeeping, we have an outside bookkeeper and accountant that
Curt:
handles all that. So that's the bulk of the functions really then. Is there anybody else, do you do outsource for marketing things or you guys just figured
Zach:
that out together? I use Tyler Brooks, an analytic. Oh, right on. So, um, for marketing and we do a lot of, I mean, a lot of it. Shoestring slash seat of our pants style.
Curt:
fair enough. Well, and that's the life of a small business from a marketing perspective. Anyway's it's lot more complicated in the last few years. Well, and I bet you have a lot of repeat business, right? Like people own their hot rod, European sports cars and, and non hot rides too. Right. You do Mercedes and Ola stuff.
Zach:
Yeah. Mercedes, Mercedes Audi, Porsche BMW, some land rovers. Um, oh, so
Curt:
it's really the sport oriented. Yeah. To some extent sport from my just European luxury slash sport. Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. Um, and so what are those clients looking for?
Zach:
Honesty fair. Um, we work in an industry that is probably as easy to disparage as the legal industry and it's frankly, an industry that would be fabulously easy to be a crook. Can. And I think that because of that, a lot of people have the opinion that people in our industry are dirty guys who are trying to make a quick buck off someone who doesn't know what they're looking at. So
Curt:
that's part of it. Uh, mechanics might be kind of dirty, but technicians are, yeah. Yeah, there you go.
Zach:
fair enough. But you know, the honesty, I think is our biggest asset honesty and we have a lot of people that come over away from dealerships and we, I think forge a much more personal connection with people than they do at the big box stores. Mm-hmm so
Curt:
those things, um, coming when things break or do they come in for their oil changes and their regular maintenance and they're always seeing their cars and then both.
Zach:
Okay. I mean, I, we have customers, one gentleman who I hope is with us a bit longer, but he's probably 85. Yeah. But we've worked on his car since 1972, when it was a brand new Porsche. My dad started working on his car. Weeks after he bought it and he still comes to us. Wow. And there are a couple, you know, we have a number of clients that we've had for 30 to 50 years. Yeah.
Curt:
So I know your dad started it in 1972. And you should do something special for that guy, by the way, for your 50th birthday, kind of, oh, we are
Zach:
celebration. We're having an open house. Cool. At the shop on August 13th. Okay. It's uh, in conjunction with the Rocky mountain region of the Porsche club. Um, we've done it okay. Every year, except for the past two years. Right. And we usually have 150 to 250 people that
Curt:
show up. I think I've been, is that the party that I've been to before? Maybe, maybe even twice, but at least once it's it's a good time. So is that open to the public? Yeah. I mean, ish. Yeah, it's fine. Like, I mean, Don't just come because you want, should at least interest. If you
Zach:
wanna courses cool cars and have some cocktails, need some food, whatever. It's
Curt:
better. If you have a sporty or luxury, just
Zach:
Don just park in a parking lot. If you don't fair enough. You gotta walk a few feet
Curt:
park at taco stop or something like that. Yeah, exactly. So you're not 50. Um, this was started before you came along. Can you, should we jump in the time machine and go back to like your earliest memories of the business?
Zach:
Yeah. Um some of them are real and some of them are probably just, the way oral history works in the world. Right. But my dad started the shop in 1972. He had left the university of Michigan and was driving through the area. And according to him met some cool dudes who had a keg in the back of a truck and. He had his tools and he had been a pretty successful race car driver on the east coast and okay. Porsche, uh, Porsche, mostly British cars at the time. Oh sure. Uh, Martins and he raced Lotus's and Ford Martinez. Oh, wow. Um, and had some SCCA national championships and he, he was a good hot shoe. He had some credit. Yeah. And he stopped and had a few cocktails and decided that Fort Collins. Pretty cool and rented a spot up on commerce drive up
Curt:
north and early adopter, Fort Collins. Wasn't really widely considered to be cool at that time. That's back when they
Zach:
still only sold three, two,
Curt:
right? right. Yeah. It wasn't even a, it was a dry town nearly. Yeah.
Zach:
Um, but he stopped and you know, the next few years fly by in my mind. Cause I didn't exist. Right. But
Curt:
my mother, well, let's talk. Can we talk about that first? Like he like rented a little space with a garage and putter sports car, like registered in LLC years. Probably didn't even do that. Just got a sign. Got no, he was a
Zach:
sole proprietor. Yeah. which was complicated when he passed away. But yeah,
Curt:
that's fair enough. Oh, he never organized as a LLC or anything? Nope. oh, that's a we'll we'll get to that story. I guess that was a good lesson to learn. Right.
Zach:
Um, but it worked out, but yeah, he decided he was gonna do this here and you know, he met my mom cuz she had a triumph tr six and they met as a client. Professional relationship. Right. And got married a few years later and I was born. And when I was born, both my grandfathers, both of them worked at the shop with my dad and my mom was the office. Wow.
Curt:
Person. That's really cool. Like, not just a family business, but actually a generational, but going up correct.
Zach:
Play my uncle. Both of my uncles worked there at different points in their lives. Wow. So it was kind of a, you know, it was very much a family thing. Yeah. Um, my mom brought me to work every day as an infant and you know, I got my diapers changed in the engine room and that was
Curt:
the cleanest place in the whole shop. They are
Zach:
spotless um, and so I, I grew up there. I remember my first real memories are emptying Ash trays in the lobby as, I don't know, probably a four year old
Curt:
right. Well, it's probably the kind of place that. Yes, the work gets done in the, in the rich parish shop and stuff like that, but there's usually coffee on. Yeah. And people chewing the sausage. Uh it's
Zach:
a, especially back then, it was a very social type of place as well. Yeah. Um, that's changed a bit in the past intervening decades. Yeah. People don't expect that. No people don't want to anymore go it's it's, you know, it's the same. They were the same people that also go to the bank every day to see how
Curt:
things are going. Okay. Well, the last bank I worked at, actually, they designed. Lobby with a, like a big salt water aquarium. And there was like this coffee station and these super comfortable chairs. And they were like, it needs to be a place that people wanna just come and hang out, like in the old days. Yep. And nobody ever used it at
Zach:
all. Yeah. People, people now, uh, whether it's better or worse, like to show up and drop their car off. Yeah. And know that it in safe hands. Yeah. And that it's gonna be dealt with properly
Curt:
and then they leave and, and get a text when they have a estimate and things like that. Yeah. Um,
Zach:
to be fair though, we are, I am, I consider myself to be actual friends with a significant portion of our clientele. Yeah. Um, so it's not like we've become a sterile environment.
Curt:
Fair enough. Fair enough. People still
Zach:
bring beer five 30 and. Wanna see how things
Curt:
went. Careful. Larry, we on that cord don't play with that.
Zach:
I found
Curt:
it. no worries. Uh, I got some cheap equipment around here. so, so you're kind of living a, kind of a blue collar existence growing up. You get to be in this family business a lot. Um, what were you like and how, how much you're older than your brother
Zach:
Steven step? Stephen. I am, depending on the time of year, either three or four years older, I'm like three and a half years older, but okay. You know, the three months where I'm four years older has always been important. and are there
Curt:
more of you? No, that's it. The two of
Zach:
you. Okay. And so when he was born, my mom stepped away from the shop. I see, and took care of us for a few years. And then it went back to our previous career as a dental hygienist and, you know, my dad hired, um, people that were more employee than family. Yeah. And I think that probably was a good step in the, in the, started to
Curt:
become a for real business. Yeah, exactly.
Zach:
Yeah. You know, things changed a little bit, but not for the worse or the better, just for the different. Yeah. And
Curt:
were you in your current location way back when? No.
Zach:
No. We moved to our current location. Well, way back in 1991. Okay. Um, prior to that, we had places on commerce drive. Oh, north yeah. Webster avenue
Curt:
in link lane. Oh. So all up in air park and then the big move down to the south side. Yeah.
Zach:
And actually the first place was, is no longer an address, but there was an industrial complex on the puter river. Oh, um, near the bridge under 2 87. Oh. And that's why it got its name because the river was behind the shop. Yeah.
Curt:
Fair enough. Moved down south. Was it just outgrowing the Northern locations or wanted to be in that side of town?
Zach:
I mean, I don't, I was in fourth grade at the time. I remember, I remember helping to, uh, paint the inside of the new building and spending some time on scaffolding, which was pretty rad. Right. But I think it had to be just economic factors and. I think the buildings up north were pretty dilapidated and it was certainly before the, I, I guess there'd been a sense of north Fort Collins that we've seen in the last fair decade. And in the late eighties, it was not
Curt:
very pleasant. And you mentioned that, uh, you, you could have bought the corner of horse tooth in college for
Zach:
that was, or you could have, I think that was a, that was a. Potential possibility. Cause I remember touring that, uh, that facility with my parents when I was a small child and they didn't and yeah, whatever can't blame'em for it. So it goes hindsight's 2020. So it goes, yeah, that's back when Nate's, uh, Nate's steakhouse or Nate's fish house was across the street. Oh yeah. Yeah. So it was a long
Curt:
time ago that I remember that place. It was here when I got here in 99. Yeah. So, and so it was still here then, but yeah, not too long after then it became a Chick-fil-A right. exactly. By the way, uh, kudos to Zach for figuring out a, uh, static problem. That's been haunting us for the last two podcasts, uh, tracked down to a broken cable. And so, uh, once a technician, always a technician um, so what kind of a kid were you like? Uh, a shithead in a good way. Doesn't
Zach:
shock me. Um, I was not interested in cars until I was about 12. I just, I mean, I, I think part of it was. My dad brought home a different Porsche most, you know, once or twice a week, he was driving a client's car, home troubleshoot things, and it just didn't interest me. Um, I was a very good skier. I skied competitively. I
Curt:
like slalom style mobiles kind of. Okay. Um,
Zach:
there was a point in time where I was in it on a ski team with somebody who became very well known for skiing, moguls. Um, and
Curt:
you're not gonna name
Zach:
drop after right up to it. No, I'm not because that's shitty cuz he was way better than I am and he went way further than I did. Um,
Curt:
well I, I struck out uh, a future major leaguer when I was in little league. Yeah. Yeah. I can't remember his
Zach:
name now. I can't remember this guy's name either. He was, you know, from the area Jeremy bloom. No,
Curt:
of course not. Oh wait. He's a little younger. Um, anyway,
Zach:
anyway, and I wrestled and ran cross country and was into sports and. when I was 13 years old, Aran Sinna the formula one racer died. And for some reason I got very interested in his death, that there was a big court case about it in England. And it was
Curt:
interesting. Yeah. Tell me what happened. I don't know anything about it. Um, he was the
Zach:
arguably the best driver that ever lived and he was driving at a Moola I believe in Italy and something broke in his car or he passed out and he had a wall and died at, you know, and it was, was a pretty big tragedy. And I remember reading about it in road and track and just, it interested me for some, and it wasn't necessarily his death, just like a
Curt:
different human element of racing. Yeah. A different, a
Zach:
different level, of something that I'd already always been around. And so I got that or issue of road and track, and then I got a couple more and I was like, oh, this magazine rules. And then I did some stuff with one of my friend or a couple of my friends that landed me in some. Parental, uh, observation situations. you got grounded. I got really grounded. And, and what did you do? I don't even remember at this point it was, oh, you know, I don't think it was bad enough for my parents to be as pissed as they were.
Curt:
They shouldn't called the cops, but
Zach:
they didn't call the cops. There was no cops, it was just, you know, I did something stupid and for the life of me, I don't remember what it was. Okay. But my mother showed dogs. That was her hobby. Oh. And she was going to what kind of dogs? Uh, BOLO, uh, Russian Wolf founds. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. And so she was going to Sydney, Nebraska to a dog show that weekend and because I was grounded and the shop was open on Saturdays, my options were. Well, you're grounded. You're either gonna go to work or you're gonna come with me to the dog show. Yeah. I was like, like, hell, I'm going to that. I'd been to a thousand of them at that point. And so I went to the shop with my dad and, you know, from that day forward, he and I worked very hand in hand and he taught me as much as he could. Although he loved to tell me he didn't have time or money to teach me. Right. But, you know, I worked with him and started working on cars when I was 13 years old and never stopped. And, you know, I think I got the good and bad end of working with your father in that his patience with me was more limited than it was with other people. Right. And his ability to tell me this is what's wrong as opposed to this is how I know what's wrong. Mm. So for years it was like, I'd get in a car and know what was wrong and be able to fix the problem. But I never really learned the steps to. Yeah. As to what the problem was interesting. And so, but I kept working with him and by the time I was 16, I was rebuilding Porsche nine 11 engines and transmissions and, you know, driving cool cars all the time and having the falling
Curt:
right. Well, cuz you were maybe not as decorated as your father, but you did a lot of track racing and different things like that too, as a young person. Well, I
Zach:
started driving on the racetrack with various car clubs when I was 16 and auto crossing mm-hmm um, I still do, I'm a part of the Porsche club of America's driver development team, which is there's six of us in the region and we are like the high level racetrack driving instructors for the Porsche club. Okay. Um, so I go out to the racetrack, I think I'll be out 18 days this year instructing and okay. I just sit in a passenger seat and help people go faster and you know, there's some emphasis on safety, but. Like it
Curt:
to be more exciting safely, get it as fast as you can.
Zach:
Yeah. Yeah. So I, you know, I started doing that when I was 16 and my dad helped me build a really cool BMW three 18 is that we put cool parts in and he was all jazzed about it. And he always really supported me in that without, in any way, pushing me to try to make it a thing. Yeah. He just was supportive of it and he enjoyed
Curt:
it and yeah, it got gave him a kick that you gotta kick out of it still. Yeah, exactly. But he
Zach:
wasn't like the dad who was like, all right, now we gotta build a faster car for you to go faster. Cause you're gonna go pro right. You know, it was never like that. It was just, this is fun. And we enjoyed it together and you know, I still do
Curt:
it a lot. and what's Stephan doing in these kind of years? Is he just like going to the dog shows and stuff?
Zach:
Yeah. Um, Stephan didn't get involved with the business until he was probably 20. And so. About 15, 17 years ago. So it's still a long time ago, but he just, he, it was never of interest to him. And then he needed somewhere to be that paid him money. And so he started at the shop and he worked on cars for a couple of years and decided that he would rather be the front office guy. Yeah.
Curt:
And he's, well, he's a pretty sociable guy. He's very, so much nicer
Zach:
than you are much nicer, much more handsome. He's got that side covered. So he takes care of the customers really well. And you know, he did that from a young age. He's always been very outgoing.
Curt:
Was he involved in any of the, the racing things and stuff like that at all? No. In all in fact, he
Zach:
went to the racetrack for the first time in his life, this past or two weeks ago. Oh really?
Curt:
He and I went out and he never came to see you or nothing. No, he'd never
Zach:
been to a racetrack. Oh wild. And so we went out and went out with the Porsche club and he drove his Audi and had a blast. And I've gotten older Porsche. That's been rotting behind the shop for a long time. And. He has decided that we can, as a, as a team, as a group, make that into a car that gets driven on the track for all of us. Oh, that's fun. It's kind of our summer project. Yeah. It took, it took a while to convince him it was the right thing. Or took him driving yeah. Himself to convince him it was the right thing.
Curt:
Well, and I, I suspect that probably like probably he had developed decent skills if he already drove an Audi and stuff like that, but probably you were able to increase his skills a lot. Oh, I, I did not instruct him. Oh, you
Zach:
didn't, you just laid off. No, I, I will not instruct people who have the innate ability to question my judgment.
Curt:
and your brother is strong in that skill. Well, I mean,
Zach:
your brother, your wife, your children, there are just certain people who you're around enough that they develop an innate and it's not good or bad, but they have an innate ability to just question your judgment. Yeah. At very high speed on race track. That's no
Curt:
reason to ask questions. There are plenty of other good
Zach:
instructors. fair enough.
Curt:
Fair enough. So, um, so step got into the business at that young age. And were you mostly wrenching on cars at this time then? Absolutely. That was your main role?
Zach:
My main role at the shop even, well, not quite as much today, but until the last six months has been the lead technician. Um, even before my dad passed away, I had kind of evolved into our lead Porsche technician. Okay. And that's been my role
Curt:
since then. And, uh, my brother is actually, uh, the service manager for a John Deere. Yeah. Shop and manages, I don't know, maybe a dozen mechanics and stuff, but he, he was the best mechanic for quite a while first. And so then they punished him by making him be the service advisor, the, their
Zach:
upsides for the manager. Um, I think a big part of my wanting to. Pass some of that responsibility onto my employees that has come a lot from this group. Our group, oh, I should
Curt:
disclaimer. You're a local thinking member. I am,
Zach:
but, um, you know, if something happens to me, whether it's I break my arm or I get cancer, or I just decide I'm done working for a while, I wanna go live in the
Curt:
woods for three months by herself. If, if with a mama,
Zach:
you know, if there's any sort of thing and I'm our lead generator of income, that's a bad business model. And so, you know, I've, I'm developing into more of a foreman who's there to assist. Yeah. The other
Curt:
technicians, remov of obstacles, but yeah, exactly.
Zach:
Yeah. and you know, there's probably some industrial burnout in it. I've been doing it for 20, yeah. 29
Curt:
years. Well, if you can teach fun people how to drive cars fast more, and fix cars less. That's
Zach:
kind of a fun too. Yeah. And I think it's a natural progression of the business. Yeah. That, you know, if, if I'm the lead provider of income for the business, then that's not really a
Curt:
business. It's more somebody that wants to buy it from you. Yeah. Is gonna be like, well, I'll buy it from you, but you have to say for five years and you're like, yeah, well, no, you're kind
Zach:
of missing the point. And that's absolutely. I mean, that, that exact situation happened with my father towards the end of his life, where somebody was interested in buying the business, but they wanted him to stay on as an employee. And he. Pardon in the French, but why the fuck would I do that? like, no, that's a lot. I, I, I, don't only, I, one of the main reasons I own my own business is not to be an employee. So the, if the exit strategy is to become someone's employee. Yeah.
Curt:
That seems my response is no, thank you. Yes.
Zach:
I have better things to do. Fair
Curt:
enough. And so somewhere along this journey, did you like fall in love as well? And did you did you go to any tech school or anything like that, or just no. Straight out high school started working for dad straight out of, um, or straight injury straight outta junior. Um, I started working there when you were
Zach:
a junior high. I had, no, I have no other, uh, vocational training. I went to CSU for a couple of years. Oh, okay. Um, was interested in majoring in journalism. Hmm. Um, but that was during a time where journalism was having a bit of a
Curt:
difficult, you mean like the last 20 years.
Zach:
So I graduated high school in 2000. Right. And so, as
Curt:
I graduated, it was almost leading edge of the correct of the decline of the newspapers and
Zach:
all that. Yeah. And so, you know, I did the newspaper and everything in high school and yeah. I was very interested in journalism. I still love it. Yeah. I'm still a ardent supporter of journalists, but
Curt:
well, and I suspect you're a significant consumer of information because you're a relatively philosophical guy
Zach:
I spend a lot of time reading a lot of things. Yeah. But it was one of those decisions where I wasn't doing very well in college because I was having a hell of a good time. And I didn't see much of a future for myself as a right. I just couldn't picture, you know, I wanted to either be a sports writer or a car writer. Right. And by then it was like, well, the blogs were starting to take
Curt:
over. Yeah. Motor trend had already laid off a bunch of people. Yeah, exactly. Sports
Zach:
illustrated went from being. On everybody's nightstand or, you know, coffee table. And it was just starting to decline. And I don't know that I made the right decision, but I stand by. Yeah. Not
Curt:
following. Well, interestingly with putter sports car, at least if you would've made a different decision, things would've been much different by today. You wouldn't be celebrating 50 years probably. No, I,
Zach:
I mean maybe
Curt:
who knows. Yeah. Who knows? So, um, yeah. So when did you fall in love and meet your wife? We'll get into the family a little bit more too, but, so I met my
Zach:
wife in college. Okay. Um,
Curt:
and what's her name? Lauren.
Zach:
Hi Lauren. And she's, she went to CU at the time, which was gross. Oh. But we made that work and you know, she's been in my life ever since. Um, I have a daughter from a previous relationship who's 20 now. Wow. 20. Yeah, she'll be 21 few months. Okay. Um, and Lauren's been a wonderful stepmother to her. Yeah. And we've got two kids outside of Aspen. So Aspen's 20. I have Evie who is seven and a, or she'll. She says she's eight, she'll be eight next month. Um, who is just a firecracker? Um, she's amazing. And then my wife had Ali, uh, December 30th, so, oh, I've got quite the spread of, forget about that. I have quite the spread of, uh, time. I will be a father to children for 40 years. That's
Curt:
interesting. Uh, actually my grandmother was that, um, my best friend growing up was my dad's youngest brother. Oh, cool. Half brother. Well, it's funny
Zach:
to me cuz you know, I was the young parent, uh, you know, I had a kid when I was 20. Yeah. And so I was the young parent who was out of place everywhere. Cause they're so young and yeah. Other parents look at you. Oh, you're just a kid. What are you doing here? And I'm like, oh, that's my
Curt:
daughter's kindergarten graduate. And is your mom still in her life too? And you guys co-parent along
Zach:
the way. We co-parented all the way. Tell her, I mean, we still do, but she's she's 20 now. So yeah, she's in, she's living in apartments with her friends. And so the co-parenting is less co-parenting and more like checking in right regularly. Yeah. But, uh, you know, I was that young parent, which was an incredibly formative experience and in a strange way, humbling. Um, yeah, for sure. There is certainly a stigma against that, which you know, is fine. And then now I'm the old parent, right. You know, I go to, you know, when we did all these baby stuff, I was like, Jesus, these kids are having kids cause they're having babies. So, you know, but being a parent is, you know, it's my favorite thing and I get immense joy from it and, you know, I get to do it for 40 years. Yeah. Which right now sounds great. Yeah. Talk to me in 10 years. Yeah. I'll probably be like, fair enough. The shit's over
Curt:
So, um, let's get back into like the evolution of the shop that doesn't seem like there's been like a huge amount of change. There's a handful of technicians. There's some front of the house, some back of the house. There's
Zach:
been a fair, there's been a pretty big amount of change, especially since my dad passed
Curt:
away. Yeah. Um, so when was that? In two, 2015, 2015. Okay. So in January of 2015, so there was a lot of years there, like you moved to the south location in 91 and no, he,
Zach:
he ran a successful business for 43 years.
Curt:
Yeah. Ish 42
Zach:
years. Yeah. Something like that. Math is something. Um, and then when he died, it was a very sudden situation. And my brother and I went to work a few days later and we're like, shit, what do we do now? Right. Like. It, we, we either, and my mom was really in a rough spot, but really supportive. Yeah. And said, if you guys want to do this, I'll help you figure out what we need to do to do it. And if you don't, let's close the doors
Curt:
today. So tell me about the, the facts on the ground at that time. Were you both still working there? Yeah, absolutely. Ste was, you were absolutely, we'd had a
Zach:
general manager who had, uh, run things in a different manner than had been appreciated that had put the business in a significant
Curt:
bind. Okay. So you had a general manager, your dad tried to hire some of that from the house and different things and be more of a mechanic, let the business kind of be run by somebody else more and they didn't make it work. Very
Zach:
good. Yeah. And so we had a lot of stressors when we first took over and so we had to figure that out and, you know, Ste and I had to learn. A whole lot on the fly with no, uh, with no training. And, you know, I was lucky enough that I have some people in the community who are very successful business. People who were really supportive of us and helped us on our way. Yeah. And we made some changes to the way the business operated. Um, we had, we had tried to make a transition before my dad passed away to selling a lot more cars.
Curt:
Oh, that's right. And even when we first met, you still had quite a bit of used vehicle inventory and stuff. And
Zach:
that was not an industry that once again, with the law person allegory, you know, it, it, wasn't good. And it's a hard industry to make money in. Some people do great. A lot of people go outta business
Curt:
really quickly, right. And slightly less trustworthy than auto repair. Exactly.
Zach:
And we are in a weird situation where, you know, we are the premier European auto repair. Shop in Northern Colorado. Yeah. And I'll say in Colorado because I'm braggadocious, but we are. And so if we sell a shitty car, that's coming back on us twice, right. It's not just somebody whining about this car that we sold, but also
Curt:
we've gotta make it right. And the cost to make sure you're not selling a shitty car is just too much. It
Zach:
is sometimes. And I mean, really, if, if you're just a, a car store that sells whatever it comes across, that's fine. But we have a reputation of uphold and sometimes you buy a car and you find out it needs eight grand worth of stuff and you gotta do it. Yeah. You can't, there's no out. Right. And so we've really cut down. I mean, I think we'll probably sell 30 cars this year, maybe. Okay.
Curt:
Um, it's like a helping thing for your customers, not intentional activity. It's
Zach:
great. Uh, on top of the income that we create through the business, through the core business, it's great to sell some cars, but. It's no longer something that we're trying to make a priority.
Curt:
So I wanna go back to this this time when your dad passes, the business is in some distress, your mom is in emotional distress, but willing to help pass the business along. And you've got accountants and lawyers and like it was, and you and your brother trying to figure out who knows what? Yeah, I
Zach:
mean, Stephanie and I had the, the, the transfer of the business took a few years. My mother took
Curt:
legal. Oh, cuz she owned it.
Zach:
Technically when my dad died, my mother technically owned it because it was a sole proprietorship. I think we actually, there was some weird stuff. There were lots of attorneys involved and I'm not really gonna go down that path. Sure. Don't need to. Um, but
Curt:
it was, I'm thinking more about the feelings on you. Oh, the pressures and the. Like it was really hard. You were a good mechanic, best mechanic in town, probably, but you didn't know very much about no, I had creating an LLC or no, and neither did my brother financial statement. We were both these kids who worked with HR policies or, oh,
Zach:
we still don't have those Um, but we were just kids who worked with our dad or kids. We were, yeah, we were older, but I still think I'm a kid now, so right. Um, we're kids who worked with our dad and all of a sudden our dad wasn't there and we didn't really know what the next steps looked like. And for the first six months, it was just like, I guess, get paid, you know, right. Get cars fixed and get paid and explain to clientele that things are different now. And, you know, we had that awkward period for the. At least 18 months where people would constantly ask for my dad. Right. Because he was, you know, everyone knew him. Well, he was there for 42 years or whatever. Yeah. So that was always, well, he's not here anymore. Well, great. Did he retire? Not exactly. um, but we're here. And so that was complicated. Yeah. Um, honestly, did you lose a lot of
Curt:
business? No, no, no. Once they heard it, heard it from, you looked into eye, they were like, well, this is my place anyway. And, and I think
Zach:
to be, not to beat my own drum, but I had taken over a significant portion of our, of my dad's role as the primary Porsche technician. He was still the business owner and the guy, but people knew they were still in good hands. Mm. They weren't thinking, oh, well, yeah, who's this. And
Curt:
what they really want is their car fixed. Right? Yeah. I
Zach:
mean, at the end of the day, I'm happy to be your friend and your buddy and. Right, right. Shoot the wind with you and have a beer and you know, but you're not coming to me for that. You're coming, you're coming to me because you have a valuable car that needs to be treated. Right. Yeah. And that's, you know, we were able to retain that side of things. Yeah. So
Curt:
that was successful, which is also telling to the impetus we already talked about with, you know, I'm still kind of the, the smartest technician guy. not the smartest. You didn't say that, but no, but, but the one that figures out the trickiest puzzles. Yeah. And I need to be able to pass that mantle along to others in the shop so that if I get run over by a fish truck, exactly. People know that their cars are still gonna be taken care of. Yeah. And I
Zach:
mean, I think part of it is I look at my family and my brother and it's like, you know, I, I used to feel invincible for a long time and you know, that's why I was so good at driving cars fast. Right. And I don't really drive cars anymore on the racetrack. I instruct because. When I used to think nothing could happen to me, I was really fast but now there's that moment of like, I should probably hit the breaks now instead of in one and a half, you know, markers and, uh, you know, there's a little bit more mortality. And I think having kids right. Makes more of that and, you know, the way we had to go through things with a sudden end of brain trust. Yeah. It was, uh, really hard. And I think that it's important that we create a, an environment that can foster that versus me retaining the knowledge and the tricks. I mean, half of it's tricks, right? Like there are jobs that are supposed to take longer than they do, but if you do it this way, it takes three hours. But if I'm really good at it and I've done it 10,000 times, I can do it, my sleep, let me, instead of having that car come in to my lift so I can do it really, really. here. Mason, here, Mike here, Julian, let me show you, show you my trick, show you how I do this, and then I'm gonna give you the next seven to you. Right. And you know, it's, it's tough, but I think it's gonna be worthwhile for sure. And we do have one technician rusty who has, uh, he's worth there since I was four
Curt:
years old. Oh wow. And he is so he is got lots of institutional knowledge, lots of
Zach:
institutional knowledge, but also lots of, uh, ability to make his own rules. Rusty's a little crusty. No, he he's just, uh, he's willing to tell me to shut up on occasion. in a way that, uh, most employees find very funny. Yes. he's like, you know, I was yelling at you when you were four, right? What
Curt:
are you gonna do? Would you like some of this rye whiskey or that what's this one? That's the one we already had some of, ah, I'm not a huge Ry
Zach:
one. Well, I take the cliff. Yeah, I'll try. I like this one. Yes. Yes. No reason to go away from
Curt:
something you enjoy. See, that's different than me. Some people will go to a restaurant and get their same thing that they always get at that restaurant. I'm like the guy that's like, Ooh, I haven't tried that before. And it doesn't look bad
Zach:
I fall directly in between, but I always find myself ordering something I haven't ordered. And then being sort of disappointed, get what I know what I like. You know, I've been getting a super potato burrito at, uh, big city for 30 years now, and I know it's good. And everyone's like, oh, why don't you get, you know, the mole I'm like, I don't know. I like this one. if I waste this meal, I'll be sad. Right?
Curt:
see. I don't I'm like, well, it's not as good as the super potato burrito that I really love, but at least I tried something new
Zach:
I've tried lots of new things in my life. fair enough.
Curt:
So, so you guys start getting sorted through here and it's probably, you're probably a year or two into that when you and I first meet. Yeah. And, and you get into a local think tank chapter, and we were in the same. I was in your chapter early on. So we're fairly well acquainted. Yeah. Um, talk to me about like the insights that, that has been, maybe just the experience a little bit, because people don't know what peer advisory is really.
Zach:
First of all. So I think we were about a year and a half after my dad died that you came to the shop and we had had so many people. That wanted to consult, advise and charge us to consult, advise, you know, whatever. There were so many, it was nonstop for that year. Wow. And Ste, and I, God, we had a pissing contest over who was more important, who was better. Right. Who, who paid more? My brother got business cards printed that said he was the general manager and I nearly shot him. I've never been that angry. And then like five days there, he was like, actually that's kind of his role. So what the hell's why weird. Such a Dick. Yeah. But grief does weird things to you. Yeah. And we were both grieving, really hard through a really difficult situation. And instead of working together, we. You know, we
Curt:
worked pretty a bit of combativeness at times,
Zach:
a lot of combativeness and for better or worse, when my mom got everything sorted out, she gave us each 50% of the business, which at the time I thought was bullshit. Cuz I lived and
breathed
Curt:
this thing. Yeah. And he came along and needed a job. Yeah. And I was just like, this is such
Zach:
horse shit chick Chick-fil-A yeah, I was, I was so mad and I was so immature about it, but I don't think you can be immature about grief or complicated family dynamics. And it's been fascinating because you know, you came in and I would never have joined the group except for you said, oh, come sit in for a meeting. And so I did and I was like, oh my God, this is actually, I think this is therapeutically. Not even just business wise. Yeah. But therapeutically, I need to sit in a room with other business owners who understand how complex this stuff can be and how heartbreaking it can be. And yeah. All of the, all the stuff you don't read about in books. Right. You listen to podcasts about business or read books about business. Like, whoa, here's how you make money. And here's how you do this, but nobody's really talking about the difficult interpersonal and inside of you feelings. Yeah. About being a business owner and the terror and the sadness and the hard stuff and the celebration and jubilation. But nobody talks about that side of it. It's just, oh, you're the boss. You own a business. Right. Here's what you should do. And so I sat in that group and the first time I came in, somebody was crying about something and I don't really remember what it was probably me. No, it was not. Okay. It was not you, it was someone who I won't rename. Yeah. Um, but my first thought was therapeutically. I need this. I'm coming from a really, really hard, heartbreaking life shattering event. Yeah. And even though at that point, it had been a little bit in the background. There were still people every day who would come into the shop and. Analyze our stuff and say, you know, if you and your brother don't split up, you're gonna fail. And yeah, it was a ton of that. And right, frankly, we were probably on that track because I was, I was an asshole, uh, and I was too self aware of how if I left the business would fail. Yeah.
Curt:
Without you, without considering you had almost like a chip on your shoulder, like you're like October kid paid Stephan, don't be a Dick or I will leave. And then the business will fail. And I had, you want
Zach:
that, you know, my dad and I had been talking before he died about me purchasing a percentage of the business mm-hmm so I felt like I just had this inherent, right. Because if anything,
Curt:
I should have been 60, 40. Yeah. This is
Zach:
mine or 51 49. I don't care. But it's mine. Yeah. And it took a long time to get over that. But the group was a huge driver in that emotional growth or change. I don't know if I've grown emotionally, but you know, my brother, my brothers, our greatest asset to the business. Equally as great as I am at very minimum. Yeah. And forever, I was like, oh, that guy sucked here. And it was just
Curt:
stupid. So I remember way back when, uh, he was fairly skeptical of the, whatever, it was$250 a month investment. Oh, he still is.
Zach:
I was gonna ask, oh, he, he adds up the, the monthly dues and the time I'm away from the shop and lets me know. And I'm like but you know, he has his own forms of things that he does to improve himself. Yeah. And I think they average
Curt:
out to here's your budget. Here's my budget. Yeah. Yeah. And fair enough. You
Zach:
know, for a long time he was like, well, what'd you learn today? And I was like, I don't know, man. I just feel better.
Curt:
right. Is that okay? I can't bill your feel exactly. Yeah,
Zach:
exactly. And you know, but he's, he, he, he see, see. Collaborative groups a little bit different than I am. Yeah. Or I print probably just cause he hasn't been in one fair.
Curt:
So for people that don't really understand, like the business model of a technician or auto repair kind of business, like what's the, how would you summarize like the customer experience? The like you charge your, are your mechanics are flat rate, is that right? No. Okay.
Zach:
Flat rate is great in a lot of ways, because as you do this for a long time, you can learn how to shortcut things and how to shortcut quality and still get paid and still see
Curt:
the work of
Zach:
hours. Yeah. Like if I was paying my, we, we charge either depending on the vehicle, we charge either 0.8 or one hour for an oil change. If I was paying my employees flat rate, they could probably do that oil change in 10 minutes. Right. And get paid for an hour of labor. But they wouldn't, you know, our, when we do oil changes, we do a very thorough in inspection of the entire car. We lubricate everything, you know, we're very right.
Curt:
We're very, you leave the oil plug out for 20 minutes. So exactly all that old oil gets out of there, whatever we, we
Zach:
cut open oil filters and inspect for debris. I mean, we're, we're fastidious about things because I can afford to pay my guys hourly and make them do a good job as opposed to pay them flat rate. Okay. And just try to push as much business through my doors as possible. Gotcha. And we're, you know,
Curt:
so you have to stay busy, like you can't have very much time sitting around cause with flat rate kind of they, if, if you're slow, they're slow, there's work. Yeah. If there's no
Zach:
work, they don't get paid. And you know, I. We work on Porsches primarily. And sometimes in the wintertime, there aren't that many Porsches. Right. Cause nobody wants to bring em and I don't wanna pay my guys flat rate to go sit on their asses, get nothing done, but still have to come to work. You're just not gonna make any money. Right. And that's the understanding. Yeah. And then have them working 70 hours a week in the summer to try to keep their enough money in the bank bills paid. Yeah. So, and my dad taught me this and he said, flat rate leads to dirty work, cheap work and line. Huh. And it's true.
Curt:
I mean, yeah. I mean where the incentives are, it, it just will happen when, when the only
Zach:
incentive is, if you work faster, you'll be financially incentivized to do that. Right. You're gonna shortcut stuff. You're gonna do the natural human thing. You're not gonna wipe this down. You're not gonna clean this properly. You're just gonna blast through things as fast as you can to make as much money as possible. Yeah. Even if you're honest. Yeah. I mean, even if you're an honest person, if you're like, well, if I work three times as hard and cut these small corners. Fill add up. And so we've never done flat rate. Every other shop that I know of does flat rate interesting, uh, flat rate is
Curt:
great for the, so how do you do it? Then?
Zach:
I play my guys a very healthy, hourly salary.
Curt:
Well, but then like, how do you, I guess, flat rate, isn't really relevant to the bids, the estimates and stuff like that. That's customer facing, but it's
Zach:
just my estimate there. I mean, there's a, uh, an, an industry standard guide for how many hours a job should take. Yeah. My estimate is that plus what the parts cost and the current situation is that parts slash everything is getting expensive, but this industry has been especially hard hit.
Curt:
Yeah. Have you guys been hit by supply shortages and things like that as well?
Zach:
Interestingly, because I have a wider network of affiliated parts suppliers than the dealership does I've been less hurt by that. Yeah. Yeah. But it's. I mean, there are weeks where it's just like, are you kidding? Right. But you know, at the dealership level, especially for Porsche, there's a lot of crazy stuff happening. Is that right? Yeah. Um, Porsche modern Porsches get a lot of parts that are built in Ukraine. Oh. And prior to that, they were really hurt by shortages nation or worldwide. Yeah. But they've had to make serious concessions at the man dealer level. I actually called about ordering a new Porsche that I have an older Porsche that's gone up in value by a significant margin. Right.
Curt:
I could actually have a new Porsche instead of this old PD. Exactly.
Zach:
Um, and I called and they said it'd be three and a half to four years. Uh, and my response was cool. Well, I like this one. I'm gonna keep it. That is crazy.
Curt:
It's but people will still buy'em well, and people, obviously they. Ordered up. Yeah.
Zach:
It's not it's, they're not, it's not a, it's not a problem at the corporate level. I think it is turning into a problem at the dealer level. Yeah.
Curt:
And inability to get enough inventory.
Zach:
Yeah. If you drive past a Porsche dealership right now, you will see one to three new cars available, period. Is that right? Mm-hmm I
Curt:
had no idea. Mm-hmm
Zach:
interesting. Um, and I'm not talking about our local Porsche dealership, which is wonderful. I'm just talking about all of them.
Curt:
Fair enough. Um, yeah, John's in my rotary club by the way. So don't say anything mean I won't, plus he's a pretty cool guy.
Zach:
He's a great guy. And they run a, I I'm very fond of their business actually. Um, we have a very healthy working relationship where a lot of money passes hands one to the other, but there's not, it's not reciprocal, but you
Curt:
know, we have a good relationship. You like each other and don't criticize each other. No. And I'm,
Zach:
I'm a Porsche of fanboy, so right. You know, I
Curt:
mean, how else am I gonna get the new Porsches when I want one and who am I
Zach:
gonna call when I need new Porsche parts? Right. So it's a good relationship.
Curt:
Cool. So, um, What else would you want to talk about from a, from a business standpoint? So I guess to get back to that business model standpoint, well, I appreciate that you do kind of just that hourly pay estimates. And so it's kind of just a traditional service business then, right? Like it's there shouldn't be keep the guys 75% busy. Yeah. There and charge enough. And you've got, there
Zach:
shouldn't be any weird trick to it. And you know, I actually, I went to a industry conference in March. That was, I went to one of the financial classes there and it was heartbreaking how standardized the double dip get money out of clients. Standard is becoming just, I mean, they're teaching it now. And like,
Curt:
like I'm thinking about in auto sales, it's like sell the car, but then put a big warranty or a finance package
Zach:
on there too. You know, there, there were just a bunch of. Quote, unquote tricks to drive up your ROI and
Curt:
more revenue per customer kind of things,
Zach:
stuff I'm like, but those are all, that's just robbing people. That's not a trick. That's just,
Curt:
right. That's just taking more money for the same service from the same
Zach:
customer. And, you know, we've had to adjust our pricing and sure. That's just, we're not any different than any other industry right now. Um, we're still reasonable. I think I'm even, I'm surprised at how much it costs to fix some of
Curt:
this stuff. Yeah. But I, well, you're like, I can't, I know that I can't charge less and still have a sustainable profitable business.
Zach:
Correct. We are a business. Right. Um, and we try to be as reasonable as we can, but some of the stuff that other businesses do, and this is not anyone in town or anyone that I know of just the industry standard is growing quickly to be. Interesting. Hmm. And I'll leave it at that cuz yeah. You know, I'm not do your own research I guess. Yeah. I mean, I don't need to whistle blow anything, but there's a reason that we've been able to stay in business for 50 years doing what we do.
Curt:
So talk to me about the next 10 or 20 or 50 years. I mean I saw the other day, I think it was Germany backed out of the commitment to go no internal combustion engines by 2035. Um, there have been, and there's like a lot of drama around that. There's all kinds of stuff going on in my it's gonna be really fascinating. It's a kind of the wild, wild west of sorts right now. It's
Zach:
I'm not pushing my kids to get into my business. Um, I think that I'm lucky that I have a niche set of skills and a niche access to information. That most places don't have. Most people don't work on Porsches, cuz they're hard to work on. There's not a ton of information. Right? You have to know how to work on a Porsche to work on a Porsche, a lot of cars, you have to know how to work on a car, to work on a car. Interesting. And so I'm lucky in that regard. Yeah. I think that by the time I'm 55, I'm gonna be charging as much money as I decide. I want to charge to keep vintage Porsches running. Well, yeah, because I am, as far as I know in the state of Colorado, by 25 years, the youngest person that knows how to work on air cold cars as far, you know? I mean there are a lot of really good old timers out there. Yeah. But every year there's one less. Yeah. And so I think that's a positive for me, but I don't think it's a pass it forward thing. I think the electric car situation is gonna change a lot of my industry. Frankly, I'm I'm for it. I've driven lots of electric cars. They're they're pretty sweet. Yeah.
Curt:
I mean, I don't have any, the two year review has like changed the break fluid. So Porsche
Zach:
Porsche actually with their TACAN is now making it mandatory to replace the brakes every six years, because they're used so little that they're worried about adhesive breakdown in the materials so it's the first car ever that has a, a lifespan right on the, not the brake fluid, a Spann. Yeah. On the, on the materials. Interesting. And I've been at the racetrack with Ty hands. They are a riot. They're really cool. They're crazy fast. And it's just gonna be a different world. I think realistically, it's a, I, I think that it's not a worse world. Yeah. Um, I think for me, it's a worse world and for my small industry industry. Sure. But I think overall, I think there's a lot of benefit to electrification of cars. I think it's gonna be more complicated as a social experiment then is necessarily being. Parroted, but I think, you know, stuff like, I do know there's a certain brand of car that has an electric vehicle. Tesla, you mean? No.
Curt:
Oh, uh, I'm not gonna say because you don't wanna give'em the airplane.
Zach:
Yeah, well, no, because I don't want to, I'm not gonna say okay. Um, that had a very successful run of battery manufacturing for enough time to invest a lot of money into the infrastructure. And it's not Tesla by the way. It's yeah. Much more mainstream or bigger. Um, and suddenly their batteries are failing with no, it's also not PORs with no, um, understanding of why. Interesting. And the lead time is currently six to nine months for a new battery. right. And the cost to set the dealer is, or to the manufacturer, I suppose there's still a warranty is
Curt:
between half the cost of the car. No.
Zach:
Like 85%.
Curt:
Oh shit. You know, cause there are enough subsidies take the wind out of that business model pretty
Zach:
fast. Well, it's, it's gonna be interesting to see what happens. Um, I remember five years ago, everyone was freaking out that Prius batteries were failing, quote unquote. Yeah. That hasn't been nearly as big of a, of an issue as was originally panicked about. Right. And there have been aftermarket solutions. Yeah. There are companies that remanufacture those batteries for a fair amount of money, but less than it would cost to replace the engine sure. On a, an equivalent lead priced. Yeah. You
Curt:
know, and it's so funny when I was, cuz I was in a, like a small town, rural North Dakota when I was growing up, you know, the age that you were around. But, but there were still like basically VH Chevys and stuff like that. It was up in North Dakota. And so people would build drag cards out of four 40 dusters and awesome and things like that. And I
Zach:
still have a healthy love for stuff like that. It's funny. Like I see old American cars sometimes they're just like. it would be weird if I had one, nobody would understand why I had one, but that'd be kind of
Curt:
cool. I agree. Well, and I'm, I'm on the motorcycle today and I don't know if, oh, you right as well. You got a, like a scrambler thing still
Zach:
actually got a, I got a monster last
Curt:
year. Oh, you did. We should ride together some, by the way. I, so, you know, you're supposed to the motorcycle rider's code, you wave at everybody and try not to wave to the scooters. Right. Um, but I also find myself waving to like, especially old European cars. Shit bullshit. Yeah. Doesn't matter if it's a 68. That's how I am. Or 75 Porsche, you
Zach:
know, for years, for years, Porsche drivers would flash their brights at each other. Oh, fun. And I find myself just anytime I see a car that I'm like, that's fucking cool. You go a flash flash brights that I'm like, oh, I hope they don't think there's cop back.
Curt:
Right. Exactly. I've been saved by that. So many times, like at least a half dozen tickets prevented by somebody flashing their brights at me. Yeah. Well, I will tell you that.
Zach:
Uh, thank you. I did lay my motorcycle down. Ooh. Leaving group. Last year. Oh really?
Curt:
Well, I didn't lay it down. I got spun out kind
Zach:
of no, somebody emergency stopped in front of me and
Curt:
oh, I bumped into them. Yeah. I had 300 miles on it. Oh, I didn't know
Zach:
that. And it was all because a different member of my group decided that she would tell me about her father's, uh, motorcycle accident the week before. And I kept telling her, don't say anything, yield jinx me. And she was like, oh, just look at the pictures. And I was like, no, don't say anything. Shut up, shut up, shut up. And then sure enough on the way back, it wasn't bad, but I mean, it wasn't bad, but it, it was scared you. Yeah. Well, it was not fun. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't a good thing, but it was funny, but yeah, I, uh, I had a scrambler and
Curt:
yeah. Don's don't anymore. It was
Zach:
slower than my other car. Fair enough. And
Curt:
much more exposed to danger.
Zach:
Yeah. But it was just weird to get on it and be like, oh, this is slower than my car. Yeah. Like. That bugged me.
Curt:
you know, somebody once said, uh, as a quote, I read that when you have a car, um, it's kind of like watching the world go by, pass this moving picture thing, cuz you maybe a convertible's different, but with a motorcycle it's you and the machine and you're fighting through the wind together.
Zach:
There's no way to describe it. I, and in a weird twist, I, I, my father and my mother both were very accomplished motorcycle riders. When I was growing up, my, they both had ninjas. When I was in God elementary school, my dad would pick me up. Wow. My mom would take me to school. Um, I had a big yellow open face helmet that I wore. I grew up on the back of a motorcycle
Curt:
on the back of your mom's motorcycle. Yeah. That's cool. Mom of the year
Zach:
awards right there. Yeah. She had a white, a white and blue ninja that had pink pin strapping that said byebye on it. uh, it was rad and they were both very accomplished riders. I didn't get on a motorcycle until I turned 30. 32. I believe so. My mother's father who was a big motorcycle rider, lived in Iowa, passed away. We went to clean out his hoarder closet it was very bad. My wife was nine months pregnant. We were in Iowa, in July, cleaned out the grossest thing ever, but he had this, he had this single cylinder piece of shit Suzuki. And my mom was like, well, we should sell that. So put it on the trailer and tow it back to Colorado. And we go back to Colorado and get it running. I've never ridden to motorcycle. I'm gonna try this out. And I ride motorcycles all the time now. Yeah. I love it. And I've quickly accelerated through the ranks of shitty to it. Not terrible to better to brand new Ducati, like, um, but the only reason I'm still alive is cause I never Rodee a motorcycle before I was 35
Curt:
or 30. Oh, you think if you'd an 18 year old, you wreck yourself would instantly,
Zach:
yeah. Instantly. I'm way too stupid, but now at least I have that built in. I'm not a mortal
Curt:
thing. Yeah. Fair enough. So, so, um, we always have a discussion of faith, family, and politics in this podcast. Are you ready? Uh, to choose one of those topics and, and letter up a little bit, we started almost edging on politics with the electric car stuff. Uh, but where would you like to start? We, and we talked quite a bit about your family already. We talked about EV and well, my faith
Zach:
is that I'm a fairly nonreligious person, so that's not really, I, I don't have a lot.
Curt:
I grew up in I'm nonreligious too. I think I grew up in
Zach:
the Lutheran church. Okay. And, uh, went through my, my church itself, went through some, uh, crisises and in watching the way the church dealt with those crisises, I decided that it wasn't a. Probably the right thing for me to follow. It felt very insincere and non Christlike. And I had a number of people telling me what Christ would do and things. And then when they had the opportunity to, uh, do those things, they didn't business. They instead did the opposite fair. And so I was like, well, you know,
Curt:
so well, so, so what do you do with Christ then?
Zach:
I, you know, I think he was a great dude. I know he was a historical figure. I know he lived and I think he's a great man. I just dunno how I feel about the rest of it. Yeah. Fair. Um, I, I, I would guess that I probably swing towards, I guess, agnostic. Yeah. I'm
Curt:
not, uh, agnostic with a positive Christ perception. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in a negative church per perception, generally
Zach:
organized religion. I really have a big issue with, and it makes it hard to have a faith. Yeah. Um, it hasn't treated me or people I love very well and I'd leave it at that.
Curt:
Okay. Yeah. I wanna ask you for more than you wanna share. As far as politics go,
Zach:
you can go wherever you want. Um, I'm rather frustrated today. I've had a frustrating political week. I, I tend to lean pretty far left on a lot
Curt:
of, have you scraped your Biden bumper stickers off of your cars yet? I don't have any of those.
Zach:
Okay. I was just checking. I've never been a, uh, bumper sticker slash I've
Curt:
just, I've just teased. Cuz there's slash t-shirt guy. There's a lot of, there's a lot fewer Biden bumper stickers on cars than there were a year ago. And I haven't seen any Trump once lately. Well, no, well he's old news now, but oh no, he is pretty fresh in the news these days. fair enough. So what's, what's frustrating to you about the week here.
Zach:
Oh, just the Supreme court this week, especially with the, uh, removing the ability for private citizens to Sue police officers. Or departments who do not Mirandize
Curt:
them. Oh, I, that is pissing me off. I listened to the Cato daily podcast and some of the, that, what is it? Civil liability clause stuff, right? Oh, there's civil. Yeah. It's baloney. And there's both things, right? There's cities like Philadelphia, I think is one that, you know, if your son's selling weed to the house, well, guess what, we're gonna take your house. Mm-hmm and that kind of shit, which is that's over exercising, its action in that fashion. But, but then also just police officers that do terrible things are not liable for their actions in so many
Zach:
places. Well, today's judgment was about, uh, there two there's one about that. I haven't read enough on to understand where there's a hundred year old, New York state law regarding, uh, concealed carry that they deemed unconstitutional today. Um,
Curt:
which means what
Zach:
well you had to in New York state, you had to prove in. I believe 18 other states, but don't get don't quote me. Yeah. Um, you had to prove that you had a heightened sense of need for a concealed take. Okay. Yeah. To apply for it. In other words,
Curt:
right. Your application wasn't like your ex-husband was gonna try to kill you or something, whatever, or, or,
Zach:
uh, your politician, right. Or you, you know, fair enough. You just had to prove that there was a heightened need for
Curt:
just like getting your marijuana license here in Colorado. I imagine when it was just medical. Yeah.
Zach:
But there had to be a,
Curt:
a need, somebody would sign
Zach:
off on your heightened. So anyway, it was a six, three judgment throwing that out, which doesn't that particular
Curt:
one. Well, if you're for equality though,
Zach:
like no, no, no. So that particular law doesn't bother me as much as I, I think that it's going to have wide ranging effects on what the second amendment does and does not entail. Um, if there are no restrictions on concealed carry, I think, I think we're entering a phase where the Supreme court might. Make judgements based on their own personal values, more than they have been historically. And, you know, I know there are multiple laws trying to push for 21 year olds,
Curt:
right. Instead of
Zach:
18, which under this precedent, cause they used dread Scott, right? This, this president was largely written by Clarence Thomas citing. Dr. Scott. Yeah. And the dread Scott stuff was basically, we don't want, we don't want black people having guns, if
Curt:
you can sign up for the military. Fine. You
Zach:
know, I don't know, but, but I think that there's going to, they're dredging up Dred Scott a lot, which is allows a lot more open, uh, second amendment rights fair. And it potentially will nullify existing laws, which they did this. Law's been law in your statement, like. Close to a century. Um, so I'm frustrated about that. I'm very frustrated about the Miranda stuff, um,
Curt:
which is the, tell me more about the Miranda thing. So it's like, if you don't get your read your Miranda rights. So previously,
Zach:
uh, it was cited around a case where, I mean, it's a gross case. Uh, a hospital worker probably sexually assaulted an uncon, an unconscious patient, but he was not Mirandized. And because he was not Mirandized, his confession was thrown out of court because he was not Mirandized. He was able to Sue the state for putting him through a trial. Yeah.
Curt:
The defamation of a trial. Correct. Blah, blah. Even though he probably did the
Zach:
action. So which yes, but because he was not Mirandized, he was able to Sue. They determined that if you're not Mirandized, it doesn't matter. You can't Sue, which means. If you get arrested tomorrow and you're not Mirandized, they can use your words against you without telling you that because you have no recourse. The recourse used to be was the Sue. I can Sue you civilly. I can exercise, but they, so that was unconstitutional or, oh, interesting. Which it's pretty funny. Uh, in conservative media, there's a lot of conversation today about the second amendment victory, but they haven't said a word about that other case, which, you know, in a, in a weird way, it's like, well, they want us all to have guns, but also they want to be able to arrest us without us being able to stand up for ourselves. Um, or, you know, without being able to,
Curt:
well, as long as you self incriminate Miranda then, but
Zach:
you don't have to now because the only, you
Curt:
know, it's a, the only threat to that was oh, interesting.
Zach:
So they still can, they can definitely Mirandize you and they, most of them, well,
Curt:
but if they don't, there may not be consequences. There's no consequence. Interesting. If you
Zach:
just forget about it. Yeah. So, you know, I'm frustrated, I I'm frustrated with
Curt:
that. So where did your, where do your values come from? And cuz I would consider myself a conservative leaning pro-life Libert. and you would consider yourself probably progressive leaning pro-choice pro-choice agnostic, uh, non libertarian. No,
Zach:
I wouldn't qualify agnostic as
Curt:
that's part of your identity or whatever. No, I, I what's your pronouns. Are you he? Him? Yeah. Okay.
Zach:
Um, I think that realistically I would qualify myself as, I mean my religious or faith based understanding of myself is not an important part of my self identity. Oh really?
Curt:
Yeah. Fair. I mean. Nor your political identification necessarily. So where do you come up with? Like, what makes you think that your leftist baloney will actually work for the world and that like banning guns will, I'm just teasing you a little bit, but, but like where do you come up with those, those values and those decisions? Like what filter did you use? What comparative literature, what books informed your values? Uh, gimme some background there.
Zach:
Um, I
Curt:
suppose, cause you obviously listen to, yeah. I mean, I, listen, you're like listen to conservative media occasionally and you investigate, you understand both sides. I listen to a lot of stuff. So where, where is it your family background? Is it your, I don't know your own research. Did it change over your lifetime? Has it been sort of steady
Zach:
anything if anything has shifted for their, their, for lift is the wrong term though, because you know, I think that the extreme sides haven't changed much. It's kind of weird with the way I view the world. I see that, you know, libertarian, conservative, but you know, I, I kind of go, but you do libertarian conservative, and then what's kind of happening now, which feels pretty extreme in terms of Supreme court stuff. In terms of L G B T stuff in terms, you know, it feels very aggressive where the left is feels. I feel like there's one side that wants to take something and one side that doesn't, and they're not trying to this side, doesn't feel like it's trying to take anything. Like when the gay marriage thing was such a big fight. Yeah. People on the left or on the right were like, oh, they're taking they're they're desecrating my marriage. That was a, that was an active talking point less than 10 years ago. Sure. Great. And then it's like, well, half of you guys are divorced now.
Curt:
Right. Because that's the national average. Right. And it's the same for Christians and non-Christian, it doesn't matter who you
Zach:
are on this side or on either side divorce rate, 50%. Right. But that was a big thing. They're desecrating my marriage. They're trying to take this when they just wanted this. And you know, I think
Curt:
the gun, well, that was the theory. They just wanted that. But now like the argument, or at least what you hear on conservative media is, oh, we just wanted gay marriage, but now it's like, oh, we want to have, you know, men that decide to be called women, go to women's prison instead of men's prison. Even they got all the gear or win swimming trophies or things like that. Like that's so one,
Zach:
one person winning some swimming trophies
Curt:
bothers you. Well, no like, but frankly men that claim, they are women going to women's prison and getting women pregnant. It kind of freaks me out. I think, I don't think that's, I think, I think there's gonna be a, it's a slippery slope that they always talk
Zach:
about. There's always a slippery slope, right? The slippery slope is scarier on the other side,
Curt:
if you're the one
Zach:
slipping. Well, no, if you're, you know, if we're gonna decide this is wrong, because I've decided that for me morally, this is wrong. Right. And then we decide that because this is for me, morally wrong also for you, it becomes morally wrong. Right. And then we're gonna legislate that it's morally wrong. And then men that have decided that they're women, where do they end up?
Curt:
I don't know. Yeah. I'm not trying to solve that puzzle right here. No, the problem,
Zach:
I think the obvious on the left, I don't see a huge grabbing of anything necessary and on the right. I see a huge amount of, I wanna
Curt:
take your access to energy away, sorry. Uh, or. I mean, honestly, like that's maybe that's what, um so I, I talked at rotary club this morning. I talked about kind of the, the force of persuasion versus the force of force and really the, the inflation that we have, you know, in part was caused by the lockdowns that were force of force pushed harder from the globalists in the left, um, the force of force. And, and then also that like today we had bike to work day Uhhuh and that's the force of persuasion to say, Hey, we could ride our freaking bikes to work and have a good day about it. And it's not, doesn't require that force of
Zach:
force. I land in an interesting stance on that. I think that as far as lock, I, I think that there. A tough line and I don't draw that line, which is why I'm not a politician and no one's hiring me or electing me to do that. But I do think that there is a need for force, for force when there's a greater good involved. And I'm not the one to judge or decide what the greater good is. But I do think that there are situations where there's a need for some level of intervention, because I, I look at it like this in every situation in life, whether you look at drunk driving or spanking or anything, that's become legislated, it doesn't become legislated because you did it kind of badly. You personally. Yeah, it becomes legislated cuz some dumb shit did it way too much fair. And it's like the shooting Aldi. I don't want to say people shouldn't be able to have guns, but if an 18 year old can go to a store and finance a gun with$0 down and then murder a bunch of people that same day, because he was able to get the gun for free because he didn't have to pay for it. That seems a little bit like maybe that guy fucked it up for everyone else.
Curt:
Well, but$2,000 or whatever is not a very high barrier. If he had to save that much cash either like crazy people can have that. Yeah. But, well, I don't didn't
Zach:
but my stance is I deal with my kids. Right. I'm like, you screwed that up. Right. You just took that a step too far, but socially in society, sometimes people just go too far and then there has to be a rule created about that.
Curt:
So like, to about, I mean, the, the oil problem, like it's tried to be blamed on Ukraine and Russia and stuff like that, but really. It's because of the lack of investment in the sector when oil was free or$30. Yeah. You know's not which caused by the lockdown. That's that's not, well, the use of force, there's still, there was no demand for oil. So why would you want to have that? Well, so
Zach:
the biggest problem is that with the oil, I read an article in the wall street journal the other day that was talking about the value of investment. So the value of investment a year ago has changed. And the value of investment now is kind of
Curt:
wobbly. And so you don't know how much the value of it is. So do you invest in it? Right? And the reality is you go up at least.
Zach:
And how long is it gonna stay there? Right? I mean, this is, this is the type of stuff that affects left and right.
Curt:
Well that, that's the force of force. It's the force of force, but it's also because oil is so useful that you have to use force to keep humans from using it. Like humans are gonna wanna fly airplanes around. They're gonna wanna drive P around Porsches and things. Oh, I get it. And so. To keep us little ant like creatures that we call humans from using all that wonderful oil or coal arguably or whatever. I like
Zach:
significantly better conspiracy theory
Curt:
than one we're going for. I have to use the force of force to keep us from it, but here's a better conspiracy.
Zach:
Okay. Go for it. There are four major manufacturers, not of oil of gasoline. Okay. We will now pay$5 a gallon, which is still some of the lowest in the world. Agreed. They make 19 billion in profit. So the oil, the oil is not the problem.
Curt:
Well, the oil's there$120. Oil is a factor too,
Zach:
but, but it's not because they make$19 billion. They'll make 29 billion next quarter
Curt:
because which totally price cap'em then. That changes, inflation to shortages. It does. It
Zach:
always does. I mean, but that's the problem, right? It, this is, this is rampant capitalism at its best and its finest, but also at like the question where, okay, what is free market, right? Because that's what all we're dealing with now is free market. This isn't
Curt:
right. Well, and if, if Biden in his whack jobs, wouldn't be so threatening to the future of oil exploration, it would be a lot easier to get people to invest in production.
Zach:
No, it wouldn't because the money will then drop, the oil will drop it. Won't become more valuable to become less valuable. The there's no problem with getting oil, right? The problem has never been with getting oil. It's refining the oil, it's creating the products. And
Curt:
as long as I think that's pretty shortsighted like Colorado, hasn't hardly increased its oil production since 2020, because it's not worth it. Right. Because there's so much regulatory tangle that Pullis it's created. It's not, but it's not worth. Oh, yeah, you can make, you can make money at oil at 40 bucks, 50 bucks at white to Colorado. How's wing doing, I don't even know what that is. Oh, it was one
Zach:
of the biggest oil producers in Colorado. Right. The problem
Curt:
is they decided to go to Texas. It costs or New Mexico, but it costs a lot of money to get the oil
Zach:
or North Dakota, even when it's worth a lot of money when the oil's$30 a barrel.
Curt:
So when is it appropriate for governments to use force? Like what, I don't know, like that's why I'm not a politician. Well, but I mean, if you're gonna have kind of progressive principles, there has to be kind of a guiding values to when it's appropriate to use force when it's not. Um, there, I mean is for the collective good. Basically. I think,
Zach:
I think that's the, the way I look at it is
Curt:
the greatest good for the greatest number kind of thing.
Zach:
I think that the hardest part about it, about why I'm not a politician is. How do you exactly do that? The greatest good for the greatest amount. And that's the force
Curt:
of persuasion. I struggle. I struggle
Zach:
as that's the force of force. I struggle as a business owner in that there is a tough market and a tough idea of what you're creating for yourself and what profits need to be. Right. Versus what that becomes
Curt:
well, instead of, instead of buying a new Dati, you could have given each of your guys a$1 an hour raise last year I gave'em four. Oh, but you could have given'em five. I could have, if you hadn't bought the Dati. I know that was a bad mistake, right? Well, we correct that in the future. Yeah.
Zach:
But if. Go down to Marxist path in this country. I'll join. I'll walk in step. All right. Fair enough. But you know, right now we are a capitalist country and I run a successful business and that's, I don't feel guilty about that. Yeah. And I don't think
Curt:
that's the wrong, or should you no, there has to be profit. I
Zach:
mean, but there are levels of profit and that's, I think that's the biggest thing that leads me left for in my political discourse is yeah. I think there should be a cap on where profit could benefit the greater good in a much greater
Curt:
way. Yeah. Isn't that? What we call taxes generally, like taxes are on profits. Like that's how we tax profits.
Zach:
It depends on how much money you make. Well as a corporation. Yeah. For instance, I got taxed pretty, pretty well last year. Right. But. Amazon didn't I paid more than they did for sure. There should I, I would like to envision a world where that's why
Curt:
we want a simpler world, not a more complicated world. Maybe that's what Libertarian's motto is, is better not perfect. Cause you ain't gonna get perfect homeboy.
Zach:
What? No bullshit. Perfect. Is totally attainable in every regard. I don't think I've ever seen perfection in anything.
Curt:
Exactly. I, I don't think
Zach:
at this point, I don't think there is a perfection, um, except for
Curt:
those curtains. Yeah. They're pretty perfect for this officer. Aren't I've seem
Zach:
resolved. Well, sorry. No, I don't, you know, I, I, I understand that. I think, you know, I don't wanna get too deep into.
Curt:
No, we had a pretty nice spot politics for not, no, it's been fun and
Zach:
I don't wanna piss anybody off that might like me otherwise yeah.
Curt:
Fair enough. Fair enough. Most of your, uh, many of your clients are, you know, successful business people, Arians and things like that. No, no.
Zach:
Uh, the many of them are successful in various fields. The
Curt:
autogens a lot of professionals, probably. Yes.
Zach:
Doctors and not very many octogenarians left, sadly. Right. Fair enough. They, they were octogenarians now. They're uh,
Curt:
so let's talk about your family a little bit. We've already touched on faith and politics. Yeah. Um, unless you wanna take a potty break or you happy? No, I'm good. Let's roll. So, um, yeah, have more whiskey. We can finish that bottle if we
Zach:
try, I'm looking at the time. Cause I do have to pick my children or not pick them up, but my mother be home father. My wife is travel.
Curt:
For work? Yes, that's right. Well, she gets home at 1130. Um, yeah. Talk to me about your family. Tell, tell me about the love story a little bit. You kind of mentioned that your wife was friends, the love story a little bit, that you know, why did she love you? Why did you love her? We went
Zach:
to high school together. Oh. Um, we didn't know each other at all. In high school, we had, uh, combined friend groups and we met when I was in college and it's kind of funny. We don't, at that time, we didn't have a ton in common. Yeah. We weren't, you know, the couple that people would say, oh, that they're gonna be married for 20 years now. Yeah. But she's amazing. And we compliment each other in a hilariously accurate, weird Rocom way. Yeah. Where, you know, she's hilarious and super smart. and works really hard. And she does what, uh, she works for Woodward. Okay. Um, she, her title always evades me. They're more
Curt:
complex than something, whatever. She's a top 10 percenter kind of she's, she's good at Woodward. Um, which is, and has she been a career woman the whole time that you guys were raised in littles? Or did she stay home for a while or? No,
Zach:
she's been a career the whole time. Yeah. Um, she graduated with a, a major in world war II with a, like what? With, yeah. World war II with a, I think Eastern front, uh, emphasis. Do you ever listen
Curt:
to history on fire podcast? By the way? Do I like that one? And I really like,
Zach:
uh, hardcore history? No, my favorite's, uh, what is it? Sebastian majors. Oh, I don't know him. It's not weird history. It's uh, hold on. I'll tell you right now. Cause it's great. It's like fake history, our fake history.
Curt:
Oh yeah. I saw that. What it, I didn't. Oh, it's so did my toe in,
Zach:
I try. It's really fascinating. Cuz it's like legends that
Curt:
have become pretty much BS. Yeah. Or is, but not
Zach:
necessarily like the may or may not be, but it's really good. Like Jesus. Yeah. Yeah, totally. He's a legend and he was fact, I mean, I just, I just don't know if I can buy the whole, like other side of it. Yeah. But I know he existed and I know he had great principles and seems to have, uh, made a lot of people, think
Curt:
a lot of good ideas. Do you, do you read my blog ever? No. Oh, you should. You would get agitated a little bit occasionally, but um, I wrote one in, I think fall of 19. I think it was pre COVID. That's how I categorized things these days, but it was. Basically, I, I, I wanted to talk about what values were and what like should be our grounding of values. I'm a rotary club member. And so we have the four way test of our, do you know that one now of the things we think, say and do is the truth, is it fair to all concerned? Will it build Goodwill and better friendships and will it be beneficial to all concerned?
Zach:
Hmm. What about, what about the people who aren't concerned
Curt:
then it's done in their damn business.
Zach:
Okay. Yeah. So it'd be a terrible lawmaker's
Curt:
base. Totally. Okay. So anyway, I, I started there and I wanted around and. Long story short, I kind of rewrote the 10 commandments and kind of said, well, it's think of it more like the 10 principles of your best.
Zach:
Good. I did read that. Oh. And I actually enjoyed it quite a lot
Curt:
because it was like, you know, these things. I actually remember that thinking about your mother and father and you know, all the, all the 10 commandments, like we don't like'em cuz they're commandments cuz we three people sound bad. Right. But yeah. You just think that, well, you you'll be better. You'll you'll yeah. And so that's one of the things I was thinking about, um, as like the value of religion or faith or values training or whatever it is just like
Zach:
all religions and faith
Curt:
have largely the same principles in
Zach:
heart. Well, yeah, because they were all written by the same groups of people thousands of years ago and then passed down
Curt:
orally, well different groups, but, but it's distilled knowledge is what I'll think about it. It's it's the same human heart. It's like the like, like how beer is good, but whiskey is better. Yeah. It's. That's why some of these Bible stories and things, it's, the's human things.
Zach:
We all have the same heart and the same biological thoughts. Yeah. And most of them involve things like don't fuck people over. Right.
Curt:
And then there are people who do, but then you think about fucking people over sometimes even when you're trying to be honest and integrity face, you know,
Zach:
there's, there's a tough, there's a human nature. That's either to be a villain or be a good guy. Yeah. In general, the villains usually lose to they're too selfish.
Curt:
Well, and almost everybody thinks of themselves as a good guy, even the villains, even the
Zach:
villains, but all religions kind of have the same basic idea, which is just like, be the good guy. In most situations. You should be the good guy. Yeah. And genetically, if the bad guy. Made mistakes and died more than the good guys than evolutionarily. They probably sleeping out by now. Well, but there shouldn't be as common and they're not right. You know, I mean, in the greater case, you mean
Curt:
bad guys. Aren't that common though? Really? Not really bad. Like I, like, I think about people, like sometimes think that business owners are like these fat cats and they're just like, I mean, there are
Zach:
some of them, but even like Elon Musk, who, in my opinion, jumped the shark months or years ago
Curt:
jumped the shark. I'm not familiar with that term. Ah, you don't remember happy days. I do, but
Zach:
not that fast. When they were on the, on the jet ski, one of the last episode of happy days, they were on jet ski and they jumped over shark and tried to bite him anyway, when you go too far? Yeah. When you take it too far. Yeah. Um, Elon Musk.
Curt:
He's semi. Yeah. He's, he's, he's gone. His filter is not working properly for sure. He jumped
Zach:
the shark. He's just gone too far with yeah. And whether it be political or like I'm gonna buy Twitter cause I'm upset today. And then all of a sudden they're like, well actually you can buy it. And he's like, well, I have some questions about whether or not I should buy it. And they're like, well, you, you made a bid. That's how this works. This is anyway. Um, I don't think they're all villains. I think some of them became as, as powerful as they are because they're villains. And I think that's true with a number of politicians. I think it takes a, do you wanna name them? the,
Curt:
I mean, orange man bad. No,
Zach:
I, I think he, I'm not gonna, he's just, he's not smart enough to be a villain. He doesn't come off as intelligent. I think Mitch McConnell. Um, I think
Curt:
Nancy Pelosi, he's pretty gross. Nancy. Pelosi's pretty gross. You know, I, I
Zach:
think there are people who. are villainous in nature or not opportunistic, selfer opportunistic in a way that hurts others. Yeah. Which is villainy. Yeah. Um, yeah. And it's been that
Curt:
way once again, like that's one of the interesting things about Trump. Like Trump was almost certainly a narcissist oh. And an abusive personality type kind of thing. But he thought of himself as somebody that served the country. Yeah. And I think he really tried to serve the country to feed his own narcissism kind of, I think it's a, like you could argue against whether you did the right things or not. I think
Zach:
psychologically, it would be really interesting to understand that, man. Oh yeah. I have my feelings
Curt:
about the orange man. Mr. Trump, you can be on my podcast if you want to, if you're listening to this. Yeah.
Zach:
I mean, isn't he a Dr. Trump? I don't think he's a doctor. If you say that it'll work better.
Curt:
Okay. I'll, I'll, I'll call the doctor. If you be on my podcast, I'll call you doctor.
Zach:
You know, I, uh, I think you should definitely call him
Curt:
president Trump, Mr. President, former
Zach:
president. But I think that. He,
Curt:
I, they gonna lock him up.
Zach:
I have you been following
Curt:
the hearings at all? Barely. No. I see the headlines every day, but it's mostly seen in an MSNBC and stuff. So
Zach:
they've made, I they've made it pretty clear and it's all people from his inner circle. Right, right. It's there's no liberal gotcha book. He was
Curt:
definitely trying to pull a lot of too many strings in that time way too many people have told
Zach:
him that what he was doing was illegal and untrue. Right. And that's the, the gist of it is everybody that was around him. Except for, I guess this guy, he tried to make attorney general, Jeff, I forget his name today. But, uh, everyone was like, no, that didn't happen. right. And also what you're doing is illegal.
Curt:
Right. And so, and I'm not gonna be a part of it. Yeah.
Zach:
I mean, the, the letter that the do OG or he wanted the DOJ to release was a suicide act, you know, cuz it was gonna say. The election was untrue. We, the department of justice have determined this election is untrue. Ask this guy why? And this guy's Donald Trump So they, you know, and that was his end goal. Yeah. That's why he tried to fire Rosen, but Rosen said I won't leave unless everyone else leaves. And everyone said, they'd leave. So there'd be nobody in the department. Adjust it. Yeah. Interesting. They they've done a good job, whether you're leaning one way or the other. It, I think it's interesting to see a congressional hearing. That's put out with this much clarity and you know, every deposition is videotaped and they're all his friends. Right. And they're all just like, dude, this probably wasn't a good idea. Right. So I don't, I, I, well,
Curt:
that's what these delusions of grand jury will do. I don't think
Zach:
he'll go to prison
Curt:
probably, but he might not be a 20, 24 candidate. I.
Zach:
Think that
Curt:
they're gonna make a good enough case that he, it would be so much better for the country if he wasn't. Anyway, I don't know. I
Zach:
mean, if he and DeSantis get to talk shit about each other for 16 hours during
Curt:
I don't public, I want DeSantis to just crush Biden or whatever of Biden to,
Zach:
I remember they can't run Biden. I mean, I'm a liberal, I'm not a Democrat. You got idiot. I'm not a fan of Biden. I mean, I'm glad that Biden is president other than aside from Trump. Right.
Curt:
But he was not, but barely a candidate. Yeah. In any way. So did you voted for Biden though? Still?
Zach:
Yeah, of course. I mean, it was vote for Biden or give the opportunity to Donald Trump or a Kanye,
Curt:
like not enough people voted for Kanye in this Kanye. It would've been better than Biden.
Zach:
You should watch the testimony of Ruby, miss Ruby. Okay. I will, um, Kanye sent people to her house to threaten
Curt:
her. Oh, Okay. So maybe not. I, I think Kanye is kind of a joke, but Kanye's a total joke, but I do think that he's no Kanye screwed it up as fast as Biden probably.
Zach:
Oh, he would've done much worse. I don't know what I have no idea what I'm just telling you. He I'm a huge fan of his, he's a high risk. I almost exclusively listen to woman Americana. So Brandy Carlisle type of stuff. Yep. Or hip hop. Those are my musical genres. Okay. So I love Kanye for what he is good at politics. Probably not. It also losing his mind and not just with Trump, but just in general, he's done that very publicly, pretty a assertively. I
Curt:
think he gathered a looser grip on his mind, something, or he collected a looser
Zach:
grip. He used to, his lucidity seems to have suffered in the last few years. I don't really know. Maybe you had too many kids too fast with I, his
Curt:
it's way to a new stage of enlightenment, probably. Probably. let's just talking about your maybe is when he started his church. Let's start, let's finish talking about your family a bit more. I I'd like to get a, a one word description of the children. Uh, and if you wanna children start with Aspen, that would be cool.
Zach:
Aspen is my sole child. Oh yeah. We grew up together. Yeah. And it's very rewarding.
Curt:
Is she? Uh, she's what's she doing with her life? Is she not going to see you? Is she no. God, no.
Zach:
Uh, well that someday, maybe she's I believe she's currently in aesthetician training. Okay. Um, she's 20 in the best possible way with the least possible expectations, I guess. Yeah. Um,
Curt:
she's Blank's late. She gonna do whatever she wants from here out, you know, she's
Zach:
figuring out she goes in a way that. I respect and appreciate, but also as a father stresses me out, I'd like her to figure that out. But also I respect and appreciate that. She's like, I don't know, like get off love. Yeah. It's good. And not in a, you know, it, it's really interesting cuz yeah, there's a part of me. That's like, girl, what are you gonna do? And the other part of me is like, you don't know what you're gonna do. Do not decide what you're doing now. like, this is the wrong time for you to figure this out. You will. And I trust that. Yeah. But if you can't figure it out, then don't so that's Aspen.
Curt:
And then, uh, Evie,
Zach:
Evie, Evie is uh, uh, she's my, the apple of my eye. She is my pride and joy. We. The best friends in the world. Um, we, she hated me. for the first 18 months of her life, I was not mom. And she just
Curt:
did not like me. you were not
Zach:
allowed. No, it was, it was hilarious. I mean, it's funny, uh, looking back, but I couldn't do anything and we have just, we are the best of friends. We do everything together. We have so much fun, you know, Lauren's in Michigan for work right now. EV and I are taking care of Ollie. We're taking care of the house today. She told me, I'm glad mom's coming home, but I'm also kind of sad. Yeah. So it's been fun just being with you and you know, that's we, we get along. So,
Curt:
so is EV like Evelyn or
Zach:
something? Evelyn? Yeah. Yeah. She's named after her mother's grandmother and
Curt:
then Ollie
Zach:
Oliver, Oliver, Jack
Curt:
OJ. Um, my grandfather had an Oliver tractor when I was a kid.
Zach:
He's Oliver, Jack. I'm not. I remember very well naming him or deciding what we were gonna name him. And we went through a billion names and then I was just like, all right, that one sounds good. Um, we like it, but there's no significance to it. I like it, but he's, he's awesome. He's a perfect little five month, five and a half month old. Um,
Curt:
he's just, and can I like ask it inappropriate question? Like potentially, were you wanting to have another child? We were,
Zach:
yeah. We, so that had been,
Curt:
yeah, almost EV seven. You said? Yeah, it
Zach:
was almost three years.
Curt:
Um, oh, wow. It was a, did you guys miscarry or things like that too. There were a
Zach:
number of, uh, difficult scenarios that we went through. Yeah. That, um, it was not easy. Yeah. Um, there's a part of me that really wishes it would've happened earlier, but it didn't.
Curt:
Yeah. So well, and what happened was so much better probably than. Like not happening too, right? Yeah. I mean, we're right. You could take the suffering. Plus if, if the suffering that you had along the way was what was necessary for where you came to. Oh, there's a lot of suffering. Um, would, if you like, if you could rewind it, you wouldn't rewind it and erase Ali though.
Zach:
No, not at all. Well, no, I mean, I don't know. He's five months old. I don't know what side now. I don't know what he is. Maybe whatever the other one was or the other one or the other one. Would've I mean, you can't do that. Wow. It's that's just not the way it works. Yeah. You don't get to choose which one is good and which one is bad and which one would've been good and which one would've been bad. Yeah. You just have
Curt:
to deal to more than once. Even we, my wife and I don't have any kids we miscarried once. Yeah. And that was all
Zach:
it's been, it's been, it was not an
Curt:
easy road. Yeah. Well, I'm sorry. I didn't even mean to bring that up. No, it'ss okay. I have
Zach:
no, I mean, yeah. It turns out that life happens to all of us.
Curt:
Different ways. Like when Jill and I first. Miscarried. And like, I've shared it with people cuz I'm like a weird talk about stuff kind of guy. And for like at least a half dozen people, I was like the release that they needed to talk about their own miscarriage two years before or five years before. I mean, or things like that. It turns out that so often we're not all, you know, and well we're all broken. That's what the Bible says. Yeah. Well I dunno
Zach:
about that. I assume you're right. I haven't read it recently. Fair enough. But you know, I mean we all, I mean there, some shit works out and some stuff doesn't yeah. And you can't count on anything.
Curt:
So you came from a legacy family business, you kind of said, I don't really know if I want that to be, you know, I would love for it to be like if Ali could take it over in 20 years, is that no, I would have EV do it. Oh, EV's the girls,
Zach:
girls are smarter and better than boys. fair. Um, it'd be great. Yeah, but my industry is. A grape on the vine, right? It is dying one way or the other. I mean, if we can get better public transportation. Yeah. If we need electric car, you know, there are so many alternatives to everybody driving a car every day, everywhere they go that I totally agree with. Yeah. I think that,
Curt:
you know, so do you think that like, motorcycle racing shouldn't even exist? I think that, or car racing, like F1, like they fly jets all over the world with use expensive F one actually
Zach:
cars, incredible for the development of better technology for the world. Yeah. Um, the F1 situation is
Curt:
their climate neutral. They're climate neutral.
Zach:
I, I think that's the claim. I don't know that they are I, but that they
Curt:
well goal. No, they're they can create efficiencies to different
Zach:
things that they discover. They're climate neutral. I think by next year, I think that feels, but they are getting close. Okay. But the technology, you know, they started doing kinetic energy. Harvesting in the nineties. Right. Which is what made the Toyota Prius, which is undoubtedly better for the world than what I drive for sure. Um, but that, that only exists because of formula, right? Because they were looking and it had nothing to do back then with
Curt:
anything. Well, it was about not heating up the car. If you could capture that
Zach:
energy gain another 75 horsepower down this straightaway. Right. So formula one and the high level, the professional level racing stuff provides, or not NASCAR, but like the pro, um, um, European car racing series, F1, whatever F1. And
Curt:
there are a couple others, Indy car is kind of similar
Zach:
here, right? Indy car is a little bit similar, but they don't do any kinetic stuff yet. Um, but the,
Curt:
but it's like, who do you be? The decider on that kind of thing? I think that
Zach:
the net negative. Is probably less to ha is better to have them because even with NASCAR, which has no carbon neutrality, right. Um, all of the us and manufacturers and Toyota are pushing greener products to people. Yeah. And if you watch NASCAR, you'll see a one of those cars and that's the, the only reason they do it is advertising. Right. Right. And all of the car manufacturers are pushing much greener products now than they were five years ago. And the harder thing is oof, five year old stuff. It it's tough because the new stuff is much better economically, except for you're building a billion new cars a year. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I, I struggle with my place in the green world other than the fact that
Curt:
I know that, well, there is no like politically correct lifestyle. Like we, you just have to sit underneath a tree and whittle, but I mean,
Zach:
or something look at it, right. Like I justify myself. This way in that we, we do recycle everything. We recycle used chemicals. We, we, well,
Curt:
and if you keep a 72 Porsche on the road for 50 years, that's a car that doesn't, there's some good have to have to be replaced.
Zach:
If that person is routinely bringing it into me, I can make sure it's passing smog effectively. I can put new tires on it. So it's more efficient. Sure. I, you know that I have to sell myself a little bit. There should
Curt:
always be racing though. You know, that joke don't you, the, uh, after the first motorcycle was invented, how long was it before the first motorcycle race? The next one, the day after the second motorcycle was invented no. And
Zach:
you know, there's pushing things to be better through competition tends to make things better. Yeah. Just in anything. Yeah. In sports in life, competition tends to create better outcomes. Although, it seems like politically it's become a team sport, which I don't really
Curt:
like. right. A stack team sport, like Mr. Burns' softball team on the Clemsons or something. Well, it's just kind of
Zach:
weird, you know, I remember I can remember a time in the world where it wasn't as crazy, I think, or maybe I'm just putting on rose colored glasses. But I remember when everything wasn't like a victory for us or a victory for them when it was like, we passed a law. Right. And now it's like, oh, well, you know, Obama passed no laws. Trump passed no laws. Right. Biden will
Curt:
pass no laws, laws. Well like, well, for a while, when we were growing up, like, you know, Clinton doll, like there wasn't a tremendous amount of difference in platform. It was like, it felt like Ru Clinton was a little cuter and doll was a little older and they more blow jobs, whatever. Right. Little more blow jobs. Yeah. But it was, there was a race to the center more at that time. Now maybe not from the. From the candidates, cuz Bernie got tossed out, you know, because he was too far left for the democratic kind of electorate. And that was a Elizabeth Warren screw job and Warren. Yep. But like the, the representative races and some of the different state races and things like that, like there has become more of a race to be more crazier. Yeah. I totally agree.
Zach:
Yeah. And you know, I don't know if you saw the guy who was going rhino hunting the other day on
Curt:
Twitter. Oh gosh, no, not a Twitter guy
Zach:
was he was, uh, I think he's running in Louisiana, but he was like, get your rhino license. Then he had a seal team like break down the door to a house and walked in with a gun and was like, I'm here to get rhinos. I'm a true Trump conservative. And that's just like, God, fuck me, man. Like Trump guy anyway, like what, first of all, rhinos, aren't really a thing. Additionally, what's happening. And then, you know, I'm, I'm very left, so I'm not gonna act like I'm not. It feels like every election cycle is a further pendulum swing one way or the other. Yeah. And the biggest difference right now is that there are six highly, significantly conservative justices five. All right. Roberts. Yeah. But six, like as conservative as conceivable justices five, sorry, five fucking Roberts, but yes,
Curt:
you're right
Zach:
again. And there's no, they're never gonna come. There will never be another Supreme court case that is reasonably argued until that changes. It will be, you know, and the reality is more people vote Democrat in the United States than they do
Curt:
used to conservative. We'll see it next election. But no, I mean, if you take the, the net numbers
Zach:
understood. And so having a Supreme court that is six to three in the other direction,
Curt:
it's not democratic.
Zach:
It's definitely not democratic, but it's also not probably the way it should be. I don't know. I'm not a,
Curt:
I'm not a, a scholar, so it's pretty much like has to be the way it should be. Cause it's done. Done
Zach:
did. So they expanded the Supreme court in 1969 cause they had nine.
Curt:
Um, so you, are you arguing that they should expand the Supreme court
Zach:
now? So they expanded the Supreme court in 1969 because there are nine circuit courts. So they wanted one to represent each circuit court. Mm. Now there are 13 circuit courts. Mm. I mean, slight argument, maybe it's it's the same as the house of representatives it's
Curt:
supposed to be. But's bullshit argument. It's supposed to be, it's still a bullshit argument. Let's talk about your local experience. It's the craziest experience that you want to, sorry to cut you off, but no, you're good. Uh, the craziest experience that you wanted to describe for our listening audience, the craziest experience, maybe it's a PISE maybe it's I don't know. Yeah. I don't know your craziest, I don't know. Could be a day a week. A moment.
Zach:
I wasn't thinking about that. I
Curt:
mean, was it your father's passing? Is that crazy?
Zach:
That. horrific. Crazy would be
Curt:
understating.
Zach:
Uh, I mean, yeah, that was pretty, pretty crazy. Um, I've done a lot of crazy stuff. I've I have fun. I try to keep the adrenaline moving.
Curt:
Um, what's the fastest you've ever driven.
Zach:
um, 218 miles hour. Was
Curt:
it on a sanctioned course?
Zach:
Potentially
Curt:
yeah. For the sake of this question. Yes,
Zach:
that was, that was pretty, uh, that was pretty exciting. Um, I've had a lot of fun in cars. I've flown planes, I've flown helicopters. The craziest experience is probably being 20 years old and watching my kid being born, honestly, like that was, that was pretty crazy. Not in a good or bad way. Just, yeah, that was very crazy. So I'll go with that. That was my craziest experience. Okay. Yeah.
Curt:
Anything, uh, like if people wanna like get their BMW sported up and, uh, yeah, well changed. Where would they find putter sports car? Well, they
would
Zach:
find it at www dot putter sports, car.com or at 58 0 6 south college.
Curt:
And, uh, you mentioned, I meant to ask earlier, but you said porches is the most of our business. Is it half your business? Is it two thirds? And they better get their shit together if, uh, you're gonna have portion it's it's 65%.
Zach:
Wow. I mean, I really we've and that's been one of the biggest changes since my dad died. We, we used to be more BMW, BMW. Mercedes used to be a much bigger part of our, but those companies made maintenance
Curt:
part of dealer model.
Zach:
Your I three is that oil change every 20,000 miles,
Curt:
it was every two years or 24. Yeah.
Zach:
Why. what's changed. No reason the oil hasn't changed, right? No, there's one thing that changed massively. Okay. The original owner didn't have to pay for those,
Curt:
right? Oh. So they all sell'em with warranty, service packages and all that kind of stuff.
Zach:
And so suddenly the service intervals are 8 million miles or until the second owner buys it. Right. It used to be, you know, we, we tell people 7,500 miles or once a year. Oh, that's just our, yeah, because I look at oil and I'm like, well, that looks gross. I wouldn't want that in my car. Right. And, but the manufacturers all, except for Porsche, who then followed suit, but they all made manufacturer specific. We're paying for this right.
Curt:
Things and it got really, isn't it weird, all the different little interconnectedness of like pressure and power and we a whole nother podcast on the application of power and industry. But lot of time today, that's terrifying. Yeah. See you next time. All man. Thanks Zach.
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